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1 April 2013

Visiting the "DMZ" - Korea

North Korea is very much in the
news at the moment. Its “sabre rattling” claims that it is both capable and
ready to launch a nuclear attack on the United States of America have caught
the headlines everywhere. Although North Korea is well known for its over-blown,
self-aggrandising pronouncements, this current and sustained level of bellicose
rhetoric is in some senses unprecedented. It has undoubtedly increased tensions
in the region. Yet, it is also extremely odd, given that only a few weeks ago
the world was a baffled witness to the equally unprecedented pictures of North
Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, on our TV screens officially entertaining a
famous, retired American professional basketball player.

It’s quite likely that this present
display of political posturing is purely attributable to the heightened
paranoid insecurity of Kim Jong-un’s regime in response to this year’s joint
military manoeuvres by the US and South Korean Military Forces (arguably “sabre rattling” of its own sort). Kim Jong-un is thought to be only 29 or 30 years
old, and was entirely unknown before his father’s death in December 2011, hence
it is perhaps understandable then that the North Korean regime might be feeling
somewhat more vulnerable during these annual allied military manoeuvres than in
previous years. I sincerely hope that it is simply bluster and hot air which
will blow over by the end of this month when the joint military manoeuvres draw
to a close. However, I quite understand the level of uncertainty that this kind
of rhetoric causes in the region.

Click on the map to see the key

Three years ago I was staying in
Seoul, having arrived only a few days after the sinking of the South Korean
warship, Cheonan. Each morning I’d
watch the TV news reports and scan the Korean English newspapers for the latest
updates as the rescue efforts were given up and the salvage operations began. A
memorial site was set up not far from my hotel for the grieving families and
general public to commemorate the 46 sailors who tragically lost their lives in
the sinking incident. The subsequent investigation has claimed that the cause
of the sinking was most likely the “bubble jet” effect of a torpedo being
detonated close to, but not in direct contact with, the hull of the warship.
The investigation, contested by some nations and supported by others,
implicated the North Korean side. The incident very much remains a subject and spur for debate.

I’ve also experienced the palpably heightened
tensions caused by North Korean missile tests in the immediate region
surrounding the Korean peninsula. I was in Tokyo on several of the dates when the North
Koreans tested long range missiles that threatened Japanese airspace. North
Korea’s volatile rhetoric, along with its seemingly provocative demonstrations
of its advancing technological capabilities, coupled with its intense secrecy
and isolation quite understandably are viewed very differently in Asia to the
way it is popularly seen in parts of the globe which are further away. North
Korea is arguably taken less seriously in some parts of the world for almost
all the same reasons that it distinctly unnerves its neighbours. It’s seen by
the West as an oddball, impoverished Totalitarian state. A fanatical,
brainwashed nation presided over by a bizarre quasi-royal dynasty of hereditary
“communist-socialist” dictators. The contradictions seem both laughable and
frightening. News reports from North Korea itself are often akin to witnessing
a ludicrous yet chilling pantomime.

During my stay in Seoul in 2010 I
decided it was time to see this political-military stand-off for myself, to
learn more and try to understand the situation by visiting the De-Militarised Zone, or the “DMZ.” I had heard much about the
current situation from my Korean friends, many of whom have taken their turn
stationed on the DMZ as part of their national service in the military. A
nation divided is a complex paradox – where defender and enemy are essentially
one and the same people. Families were split by the Korean War (1950-1953), and
though their ties were severed, their deep bonds were not. Enmity and empathy both still
run deep. The DMZ has become a symbol of these contradictions, much as the
Berlin Wall was to a divided Germany during the Cold War. But Korea’s Cold War
continues. The armistice of 1953 which ended the fighting was never signed by
the South Korean side, and so, technically, the two halves of the peninsula
remain at war. Skirmishes and incursions occasionally occur along the line of
the 38th Parallel, the DMZ is a place where there is an ever clear
and present danger. Whilst the South Koreans allow tourist buses to enter the
zone and tour some of the UN conference facilities in the Joint Security Area as
well as various observation posts, all visitors are first made to sign waivers
of liability – in effect taking their lives in their own hands. I signed such a
form when I boarded my bus. From there on, if I got shot – well, that was
entirely my own risk.

Perhaps because the Cheonan was still in the process of
being raised our tour guides were overly insistent on us not taking too many
photographs. Photography is expressly forbidden whilst on the bus and also in
some parts of the locations we visited within the DMZ. In some respects I was
rather overawed by the experience; such that I rather forgot having my camera
with me in my fascination simply to see and better comprehend the place. The
DMZ is vast. It is a strip of “no man’s land” some 4 kilometres wide which
follows an S-shaped curve from one coastline of the Korean peninsula to the
other. The name “De-Militarised” Zone somewhat belies the reality, for this is
in fact the most heavily militarised
and fortified single point on the planet. As our bus motored through it,
looking out the windows I saw signs punctuating either side of the road,
warning of landmines everywhere.

Besides the barbed wire and
concealed ordnance, the strip of land has become an unlikely haven for
wildlife. And in recent years the South Korean side has permitted the tapping
of mineral water springs within the zone. Bottles of DMZ water can be found on
sale in most Korean convenience stores (and it tastes very good indeed!). When
the DMZ was first set up most of the settlements within were naturally
abandoned, however, there is one village which is still inhabited. Heavily
supported by the South Korean Government, the village of Daeseong-dong is home
to a small community of farmers, all of whom must be back within the village by
22:00hrs each evening. A similar settlement called Kijong-dong, likewise built
for propaganda purposes, but left empty, stands on the North Korean side.

Most of the places visited on our
tour, despite the bustling parties of visitors, have a strange empty feeling
attached to them. The first, being a rusty bullet riddled steam locomotive, now
preserved as a monument, stands by the restored railway line. I watched as an
empty train rattled back across the water, heading south from the last railway station
between South Korea and Pyongyang some 205 kilometres to the north. Seoul is a
mere 56 kilometres in the opposite direction. The capital cities of the two
Koreas, one rather symbolically distant and unreachable, the other a mere
stone’s throw away from this strangely scarred landscape – the geographical
embodiment of a long standing political point of contention, where two
ideologies meet at loggerheads. Much of the rhetoric touted on the southern
side revolves around the themes of freedom
and calls for unity and peace – but the readiness is clearly
entirely geared up for the opposite. The soldiers with their heavy rifles and
combat fatigues all seemed very young, but unlike soldiers in other – less
contentious – parts of the world, they seemed quite open and friendly in their
fresh faced way. The lad who boarded our bus to check our passports, heavily
armed yet bespectacled and wearing a uniform which appeared almost too big for
him, seemed more like he was fresh out of the high school chess club.

After the sadness of the steam
locomotive memorial and the forlorn, empty yet ultra-modern Dorasan Railway
Station, we were taken to the third infiltration tunnel. This is the third and
largest of four tunnels dug by the North Korean Military which have been
discovered since 1974. It measures 2 metres wide and 2 metres high, set 73
metres below ground and roughly 1.6 kilometres long. The South Korean side dug
its own tunnel to intercept it, down which my tour group descended, all wearing our hard
hats. In their retreat the North Koreans apparently daubed the walls with coal
dust in an effort to conceal its intended purpose – there are no natural coal
seams in this particular area’s local geology. Cold, dank and dripping with water the
tunnel is a strangely eerie experience to walk along and explore. The tunnel is
now barricaded at the mid-section of the DMZ, but it's still possible to peer beyond
this point into the literal and metaphorical darkness of the unknown. It is
believed that there must be other tunnels as yet undiscovered. In the course of
my various trips to South Korea since 2005, more so than the stories of North
Korean defectors, I’ve been fascinated by the occasional brief reports in
Korean newspapers which claim evidence of North Korean spies and reconnaissance
parties infiltrating the South, either utilising tunnels or small submersibles,
sometimes becoming stranded and so committing suicide rather than surrendering.

The last place on my tour was Dora
Observatory, built in 1986, it gave the clearest view into distant North
Korea. From here you can see the famous flagpoles duelling for supremacy in height,
as well as the heavily fortified stretch of the Military Demarcation Line. Even
squinting through binoculars, beyond the DMZ there is little of much remark to
see. Just hills and trees, a few buildings, all tiny in the distance – much
like the landscape and scenery behind you. But what is different of course is
the conception. You are looking at a place which you are not permitted to
venture into, and, if you did manage to venture across, you would find yourself
in a decidedly strange and unfathomably different social order. It’s perhaps
that sense of the unknown and the perhaps unknowable
which, in essence, I think, keeps the fear and the fascination for North Korea
in our daily headlines. You can’t help staring across that line, and wondering:
“What if I’d been born over there
instead of here?” … What must it be
like over there, being born, growing up, and living in such a place – isolated
from the rest of the global community? It made me think of a night view of the
Korean peninsula which I’d seen, taken from a satellite, the lights of the
towns, cities and roads glow warmly in China and South Korea – but the space
between these two nations is as dark as the seas on either side. North Korea is
a blank not simply on the map alone. North Korea is everything we simply do not
understand.

I hope one day the two Koreas will
be reunited. It will undoubtedly be a complex and painful procedure. But, when
it eventually happens, I hope the process which results in such a reunification
will be a peaceful and harmonious one.